SparkPost updates email validation services to improve deliverability rates

Email delivery firm, SparkPost, has announced new enhancements to its validation service, SparkPost Recipient Validation. According to SparkPost, the enhancements include additional data which doubles the number of bad email address it is able to detect. The feature identifies the bad email addresses using historical bounce data and analyzes the sending behavior of other SparkPost customers to allow customers to filters the bad emails.

“SparkPost uses typo detection, DNS checks, and especially historical bounce data from thousands of other customers, based on its sending 37% of the world’s B2C and B2B email,” said Charlie Reverte, chief product officer at SparkPost. “That way customers can remove bad emails from their lists before sending so they don’t hurt your sender reputation with ISPs.”

Why we should care

List management practices are a critical element to managed inbox optimization. Sending to bad email addresses and hard bounces will significantly hurt your deliverability. SparkPost’s capabilities could ease that process for marketers.

“Today’s inboxes are algorithmic: they work much more like your facebook feed than inboxes of 10 years ago,” Reverte told Marketing Land. “List management practices are crucial to getting good inbox visibility and staying out of the spam folder because inbox providers look very closely at your bounce and engagement rates.  If you’re not proactive in managing bad email addresses and unengaged recipients, you’re not going to get good visibility in the inbox and your competitors will.”
 
Many businesses likely have bots signing up via lead generation forms on their websites, often providing bad email addresses. Once a welcome email, for example, attempts to be delivered and returns a hard bounce, the result impacts their sender reputation, ultimately reducing deliverability to customers — and potentially losing legitimate prospects.

	

		
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More on the news

• Recipient Validation uses SparkPosts’ email and analytics platform, which identifies millions of data points to eliminate undeliverable and toxic addresses from your email marketing list.
• The feature uses DNS checks, scans for typos, and analyzes SparkPosts’ customers’ historical sending data to identify bad email addresses.
• Recipient Validation into email workflows through the API to expedite validation.
• SparkPost customers include Zillow, The New York Times, Booking.com, Rakuten (formerly Ebates) and Zynga.

I’ll be presenting on Managed Inbox Optimization during two sessions at MarTech East in Boston, September 16-18. I hope to see you there!

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jennifer Cannon

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media's Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.